1.9 tdi starting

[judgejeffery]

Hi there I'm a new member. I have a problem with starting.

1. The car starts instantly from cold.
2. If car is not driven immediately or revved it can stall and die. 
3.  It will then  start but only by cranking engine for about 10 seconds  (it seems to be trying to fire)
4. This problem continues when vehicle is hot and has stopped for a few seconds or a hour or more)

It always starts eventually.

any ideas anyone.

JJ

[insanitybeard]

Greetings!

Ideally you could do with checking to see if any fault codes have been stored, from your description I'm wondering if a dodgy MAF sensor may be to blame, but that's a semi-educated guess on my part. What's it like to drive once you're driving/moving and not idling? Is it basically stalling whenever the engine is idling, regardless of engine temperature?

[judgejeffery]

Hi Thanks for info, will get codes and maf checked. Car does not stall once revved and running, but easily stalls if not enough revs applied before moving off, which seems to be unusual for  diesel. All my other diesels you can feed in clutch almost at tickover and it will move. 
Thanks

JJ

[judgejeffery]

Hurrah, problem appears to have disappeared or cured.  The car  was treated with a fuel cleaning product from Power Enhancer  (I've used this before with great success and have NO association with the company)
This I applied when I bought the vehicle in late October and then drove 8 miles to where the car was going to be stored.
On 1/12/2014 I had made the vehicle road worthy and started driving it. For the 1st couple of stops/starts the car was still needing excessive cranking when hot.  But towards the end of the day it seemed much better, Since then I have used it every day and the problem has gone.
A friend advised that possibly it was water/contaminates in the fuel and the cleaner had dispersed them allowing them to pass through engine.

Whatever its cured.

JJ

[judgejeffery]

In my last post I said it was cured. It wasn't, when the additive treated fuel was replaced with untreated diesel the problem started again. Took it to local (trusted) garage. After some basic investigation they checked timing belt.   The manual tensioner was loose and the hydraulic tensioner  was obviously only working when engine was running. The belt was so loose it had had skipped a cog and could easily be pulled off.  New belt kit including tensioner and now she is totally cured.  I think I was extremely lucky not to have a ruined engine.

The belt had supposedly been changed by a garage last year. Maybe it had, but it hadn't been done properly.  The starting ok when the additive was in the fuel, may have been down to the cetane additives allowing it to start easily under marginal conditions.

JJ

[Mirez]

EEEKKK!! Lucky chap, could have been so much worse!